1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a beverage package that can produce sound effects such as songs, melodies, or another message. As an example, a wine bag has a sound emitting device located inside that plays a song when a wine bottle in the bag is pushed downward.
2. Background
Amusement devices that use a sound emitting device comprising an integrated circuit connected to a small speaker to play a short message with sound effects are well known. For example, toy ambulances that emit a siren sound along with short phrases were popular children""s toys at the time this invention was made. Also, well known were birthday cards that play xe2x80x9cHappy Birthdayxe2x80x9d when opened.
Combinations of sound emitting devices and packaging are also known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,137,410, issued to Sepulveda on Oct. 24, 2000, entitled xe2x80x9cBag with Sound Emitting Device,xe2x80x9d discloses a festive bag having a U-shaped pair of handles that have metal plates on the inside of the handles. When the handles are separated, electrical contact between the metal plates is broken and a sound emitting device located in the interior of the bag is activated.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,795,209, issued to Moore on Aug. 18, 1998, entitled xe2x80x9cPackage Amusement Device and Method,xe2x80x9d discloses a detection means, integrated with a packaging means, for detecting an interaction, e.g., touch, with the packaging means that is electrically connected to a microprocessor means that can generate a (human) sense detectible signal, e.g., sound. When the packaging means is a box, the detection means is a transducer mounted antipodal to the microprocessor means. The transducer and a battery appear to be mounted underneath the top and a microprocessor speech chip and speaker mounted in the bottom. Activation of the transducer causes the production of sound from a position away from the transducer""s position. Another example is an egg shell-type package having multiple detectors.
In spite of considerable interest in coupling sound emitting devices with packaging, there does not seem to be any commercially available examples, at least not with packaging suitable for containing beverage bottles, such as wine and the like. Since the retail price of such packaging can be as low as a few 2001 dollars, the manufactured cost must be appreciably less than a dollar. This puts a premium on using off the shelf components requiring minimal assembly. Having a sound emitting unit connected by wires to a remote switch increases the degrees of design freedom, but in a paper bag will require tape or other attachment means to keep the wires from intruding into the carrying space of the bag.
Accordingly, the major objective of the invention is to provide a beverage package with a sound emitting device that can be assembled with minimal labor using a minimum number of parts that will play a tune or other sound emission when a beverage container is pressed into the package. Using wine as the beverage and a paper wine bag for illustrative examples, another objective is to position the wine bottle so that sound-emitting unit is not activated solely by the weight of a wine bottle. A further objective is to locate different size wine bottles so that the sound emitting device is not muffled. A still further objective is to avoid any permanent attachments to the wine bag so that it can be reused or the sound emitting device readily replaced.
These objectives are realized in a design that can use any common paper wine bag, a commercially available self-contained sound-emitting device with an integral switch, and a custom, but inexpensive plastic, or other material, locator unit. The sound emitting device is placed in the bottom of the bag (herein, the words xe2x80x9ctopxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cbottomxe2x80x9d are used in their usual and customary sense) followed by the locator unit. The commercially available sound emitting device is contained in an approximately matchbox-size plastic box that has a speaker projecting through a spring-loaded top cover and a switch that is actuated by pushing down on the top cover in a defined manner.
The locator has protrusions that position the sound emitting device underneath it in a corner of the bottom of the paper bag with an aperture for the speaker. The locator has raised bottle slides with selected radii and position for the center of the radii that act as bottle positioners. The radii center is positioned on the other side of a locator center line than the speaker. As a result of the bottle locating design, large wine bottles do not cover the speaker nor actuate the switch unless pressed down. The locator is adequately stiff so that a small wine bottles located away from the sound emitting device will still activate the switch when they are pressed down.
Provisions are made for the sound emitting device to be demountably retained by the locator so that merchants can separately stock wine bags, locators and sound emitting devices with different outputs.